Like Asian Indians and Filipinos, Korean immigrants suffered not only from colonialism in their homeland, but also from racist laws in the United States. For example, many Korean immigrants had a difficult time renting homes due to racist laws and were not allowed to own land after the passage of the California Alien Land Law of 1913 which prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning land or leasing it for longer than three years.” Koreans were categorized as aliens who were ineligible for naturalized citizenship at the time. In addition, they were denied services at many public recreational places and restaurants. Dr. Lee-wook Chang, former president of the Seoul National University, recalled his experience with racial discrimination as follows:

I entered a restaurant and sat down in order to have lunch. Although there were not many customers, the waitress did not come to my table. After awhile, a young receptionist came to me and said with a low voice that, “we can‟t serve you lunch, because if we start serving lunch to the Orientals, white Americans will not come here.”

However, what distinguished Korean immigrants from other immigrants was their strong sense of ethnic solidarity which arose from their fight against colonialism in Korea. Most of early Korean immigrants had a great concern about their homeland. According to Bong-Yoon Choy, they always perceived themselves as “temporary sojourners,” and devoted their time and energy to the Korean national independence movement.

Most Korean immigrants left their homeland between 1902 and 1905. Koreans were prohibited from immigrating to the United States after this official emigration period because the Japanese government believed that Korean immigrants would hinder Japanese workers‟ rights on the Hawaiian plantations and participate in anti-Japanese activities in America. Nevertheless, there was a small window of opportunity for Korean women to move to the United States as picture brides.

Because American laws prohibited interracial marriages at the time, Korean bachelors who immigrated to the United States had a very hard time finding wives. This phenomenon led to a significant gender disparity within the Korean immigrant community. About 90 percent of early Korean immigrants in Hawaii were male. It was the practice of picture brides that these bachelors‟ pictures were sent to Korea and shown to single women who were willing to migrate to the United States and become their wives. For the Japanese government, as Sonia Shinn Sunoo pointed out, the practice was expected to function as an effective means to quell the political passions of Korean immigrants in America. For the Korean picture brides, it would provide an opportunity to escape the traditional gender role imposed by the Confucian society of their homeland.

Korean picture brides (Photo from the Honolulu Advertiser)

The practice began with Japan‟s annexation of Korea in 1910. Because Koreans were considered Japanese nationals after the annexation, the Korean picture brides could use the Gentlemen‟s Agreement of 1907 between the United States and Japan which allowed the wives and children of Japanese immigrants to enter the United States. From 1910 to 1924 when all Asian immigration was prohibited by the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, more than 900 picture brides immigrated to Hawaii and more than 100 to the mainland to marry Korean immigrants.

Most picture brides were much younger than their husbands. In fact, many Korean immigrant bachelors sent photos that were taken when they first arrived in Hawaii. As a consequence, many men in the photos looked much younger. One of the Korean picture brides, Anna Choi, a fifteen year old at the time of marriage, bitterly recalled the day she met her husband for the first time: “When I first met my fiancé, I could not believe my eyes. His hair was gray and I could not see any resemblance to the picture I had. He was forty-six years old.” Though many picture brides were disappointed by their fiancés, most of them decided to stay in the United States because a refusal to marry them meant going back to Korea. “I cry for eight days,” another picture bride recalled, “and [I] don‟t come out of my room. But I knew that if I don‟t get married, I have to go back to Korea on the next ship. So on the ninth day, I came out and married him. But I don‟t talk to him for three months.”

As the picture brides came to the United States and married Korean men, a new Korean family and community was developing in America. However, most Korean immigrants planned on returning to their native country after making money in the United States. For this reason, when they heard that Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, they grieved over the loss of their homeland, a motherland to which they hoped to return one day.

Their grief and sorrow helped Korean immigrants to develop a sense of ethnic solidarity. They organized the Korean national independence movement in the United States to protest Japanese colonialism. The patriotic zeal of Korean immigrants enabled them to send their funds to Korea and build political organizations and military schools in the United States. In short, Korean immigrants were “bound to their past by the loss of their home country.” As Elaine Kim puts it, “Korean farmers, waiters, and domestic servants by day became independence workers by night.”

“Protesters against Japan trade” (Photo from the photographic collection of the Korean American Archive, University of Southern California)

Many Korean immigrants focused on education as a means of liberating Korea from Japanese colonialism. As a result, Korean immigrants‟ literacy rate was the highest among Asians living in the United States by 1920. Korean immigrants built language schools to teach Korean history and language to their American-born children. Recognizing that language was the foundation of their national identity, Korean immigrants set up Korean schools in many cities such as Sacramento, San Francisco, Dinuba, Reedley, Delano, Stockton, Manteca, Riverside, Claremont, Upland, and Los Angeles. Many Korean immigrants, including pastors, served as instructors. They used the Bible and Korean newspapers as their textbooks.

The influence of churches at the schools was widespread. By 1918, there were 39 churches that taught Korean history and culture to children of immigrants in Hawaii. In 1920, approximately 800 Koreans attended these language schools in Hawaii, outnumbering their enrollment in public schools. The magnitude of the enrollment not only displayed the organizing power of the Korean churches, but also revealed the depth of Korean American patriotism in their fight against Japanese imperialism.

Furthermore, the Korean churches served also an important resource for Korean immigrants fighting for the independence of their homeland. They were gathering places where many Korean immigrants engaged in political activities. Among these activists were a few significant figures who led the independence movement in the United States. These individuals included Chang Ho Ahn, Syngman Rhee, Yong-man Park, and Jae-pil Suh. Though they all believed that Korean immigrants needed to unite and show loyalty to their homeland, they had different visions; so they used different tactics to achieve their goals. On the one hand, Yong- man Park argued for a militant approach and developed a military academy to train young males to use arms against Japan. Syngman Rhee and Jae-pil Suh focused on diplomacy and propaganda as a way of liberating Korea from Japan, while Chang Ho Ahn emphasized the power of education. In particular, Chang Ho Ahn stressed cultural renewal and the creation of a patriotic leadership among Korean immigrants. Ahn later established an academy and worked as the secretary of labor at the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai.

Chang Ho Ahn (below center) and the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai (Photo from www.dosan.org)

Forcibly separated from their homeland, Korean immigrants were often mistaken as the Japanese people. In such case, many Koreans asked to be completely disassociated with the Japanese. On one occasion, a Korean immigrant, Kwang-Son Lee became angry at her history teacher who could not distinguish Korean people from the Japanese, and remarked, “Are you so ignorant you don‟t know what a Korean is? And you a history teacher?”

A significant incident occurred in 1908 that revealed Korean immigrants‟ loyalty to their homeland. Durham Stevens, an American who was employed by the Japanese government, made a public announcement that Koreans were benefiting under Japanese rule and were not fit for self-government. When his speech was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Korean immigrants were furious and asked Stevens to make a formal apology for justifying Japanese imperialism. When this request was denied, a group of Korean immigrants confronted Stevens. It was at the time that one of the protesters, In-hwan Chang, took out a gun and assassinated Stevens. During his trial, Chang denounced Stevens as “a traitor to Korea” and said, “To die for having shot a traitor is glory, because I did it for my people.” Many Korean immigrants rallied for Chang and donated money for his defense. Though their efforts to release Chang failed and he was sentenced to serve 25 years at San Quentin State Prison, Chang remained a hero within Korean immigrant communities.